And please! If you see the sticker over the built-in camera of my laptop,
go ahead and call me paranoid. Go ahead and call me paranoid when I don't feel
comfortable using just any service (skype, facebook, gmail for example) to communicate sensitive
stuff. So the GCHQ collects sexually explicit video chat
material? Wasn't there
another news recently documenting how the GCHQ explicitly discredits
individuals and companies as a mean to influence people? Guess there is no way
I know anybody who is paranoid enough to not become a victim of the five eyes.

Update: Martin Fowler found the right words
on why privacy matters for everybody who wants to live in a free society or democracy for that matter.

So a month ago the Jamaican Two-Man Bobsleigh team Watts/Dixon was
qualified to compete in the olympic games but had no money to fly to Sochi.
They finally received a donation in Dogecoin, which is a 70 million dollar
fun project that started as a joke. I must say I highly doubt the good and fun
intention behind the origins of dogecoin and would much rather see this and
all the similar copy and paste coins die
than push their popularity here but the Jamaica-goes-to-Sochi-success was somehow
cool :)

Bloomberg titled today:
"The glitch that will kill bitcoin"! But what happened? Turned out a very
well known glitch in the bitcoin protocol, where a transaction published with a
certain transaction ID can be re-published with a different transaction ID (but
of course not alter the sender, recipient or amount of the transaction) was
exploited to scam MtGox out of money. People that made MtGox send them bitcoins
took the transaction MtGox broadcasted and re-broadcasted the same transaction but with a
different ID. That results in them getting the money either way. Thanks to MtGox
producing "ugly" IDs and the attacker producing "slightly nicer" IDs as per rules
MtGox own custom bitcoin client does not yet follow, the attacker almost always
can replace MtGox' transaction. As MtGox was not aware of this glitch, they
manually sent the money out again as they could not find the relevant transaction
as per the ID they assigned it and so they slowly leaked money until they
stopped sending any money to their customers almost a week ago.

Now as I assume to further destabalize the bitcoin price, somebody randomly
attacks huge amounts of transactions in a similar way, which results in users
getting confused about their clients reporting they sent the money out twice
but only in the display. There is no money moving without people sending it.

… and as if that was not enough, somebody spams random people with so called
dust transactions. If you received 0.00000001BTC, that is 0.0007ct. and it will
not get confirmed. Even if it does, it will cost you 7ct. to spend these
0.0007ct, so most likely none of the recipients will ever spend this "present".
Why is he sending out dust? Well, if you google for the sending address, you get
to a webpage, so maybe it's just to generate traffic on his webpage.

… swinging
from over $800 to $620 and back to $740 in one day.
What happened? Well, first it was not clear what happened but the price action started on MtGox.
At first people attributed it to new regulation
banning bitcoin completely in Russia but then it pretty much became clear that MtGox was behind it
when they did a press release
stating that for technical reasons they have to halt all bitcoin withdrawals at
least until Monday. So why did the price action start an hour before that press release?
Was it insider trading?

I can't fully support this video
and all of its content as I simply can't know.
But I know for a fact that it completely makes no sense what is going on in Syria right now and that "Cui bono?" is the right question to ask:

Assad has a military under his command armed to the teeth that could kill every rebel 5 times over

Chemical weapons inspectors were in the country

The USA could kill the worlds population within days many times over

The USA went on record with chemical weapons being the red line that would draw them into the war

Chemical weapons are used

It hurts to see the war that is going on in Syria but I am scared like shit of what
might happen if Iran and Russia side with Syria and … well, use your imagination.

Rick Falkvinge hears
"the last warning bell"
when family and friends of journalists get detained for many hours and
newspapers get their hardware destroyed and ordered to stop reporting about
wrong-doings of another (and maybe the own) government and when these outrageous
events don't cause outrageous reactions.

I doubt Falkvinge is right about this being "the last warning bell" as
journalists so far worked assuming freedom of press but many more will continue
working even when this assumption can generally not be taken but I totally agree
that this is what destroys journalism and their control of governments. And yes,
I agree that our privacy and freedoms is at stake which is more important than
any other subject that normally decide elections for the one party or the other.

EN: Yesterday I explained to an acquaintance stuff about TOR,
PGP and online security in general.
I was really shocked when his reaction to"Hey, it's easy. Just install the TOR browser bundle!"
was"Oh, no way! I would certainly have the police at my door step the next day!"
Why? Why would he? Why does he think that way? Do others think the same?
Is privacy already illegal here in Chile? And even if the police tried to scare you, secret services
reading each and every single one of your e-mails is not enough to make you take
the risk? Oh come on! Ease of use might be an excuse and is basically why I don't
use TOR for all my browsing and maybe why the list of people I can use PGP with
is really short but especially in a free country where using privacy is not illegal
the police is the last excuse I can accept for not protecting your stuff!
Another news for the "nothing to hide, nothing to fear - folks:
Google 'Pressure Cookers' and 'Backpacks,' Get a Visit from the Cops
So after reading this, the scissors in your head might make you think twice if
you should buy a pressure cooker online, if you buy it in a store better pay
cash or if that makes you oh so suspicious that you best never ever buy any of
these dangerous tools of terror.

Erik Voorhees,
the owner of
Satoshi Diceannounced
today the sale of exactly this Satoshi Dice for a total of 126,315Ƀ. At current
rates that's about $12,000,000US. My thoughts are with this guy who closed a
chapter in his life and still he will have a hell of a ride in Bitcoin with
all of his other projects.

Kudos to you Erik!

Update: Apparently a company being sold for $12million is bearish
news because of all the share holders getting back their bitcoins in some hours
and some might want to … invest in Federal Reserve Paper!?!? I don't get the
logic in that but we will see what happens the next hours and days. Now the
price just dropped 5%10%. My guess is we will not fall below $8075/Ƀ within
one week.